Coping saws have long been used manually for making patterned intricate cuts into workpieces such as craft and art designs and fitted joints for moldings. The use of a hand held coping saws for this purpose however makes the end product highly dependent upon craftsmanship skills and thus a standardized product shape is difficult to attain particularly when complex two or three dimensional patterns are involved such as necessary to fit contoured moldings into chair molding or crown molding corner joints.
Bench saws of the coping saw variety are known, for example, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,741, May 2, 1989 to R. Wellington, et al. for Reciprocatory Machine Tool. However such saws are very limited in the types of precision repeatable pattern cuts possible since the workpiece still must be manipulated by a craftsman to develop a pattern. Furthermore the size of a workpiece that can be practically manipulated for cutting of patterns is very limited in length and area.
There have been few precision methods of cutting patterns within close tolerances with a manually held or positioned coping saw because of the depenency of a craftsman to manually align the coping saw blade axis with various work axes on the workpiece. Witness to this is the lack of precision in the making of corner joints without defects with contoured molding strips used in chair rails or crown moldings. This typically exemplifies the difficulty to follow both two dimensional and three dimensional cutting patterns with reciprocating coping saws.
Thus it is an objective of this invention to improve the state of the art in coping saw equipment and methods of use by correcting the foregoing defects.
Another object of the invention is to provide coping saw equipment and semi-automatic methods of use for precisely forming complex two dimensional and three dimensional patterns of critical cutting radiuses and in large workpieces with minimal craftsmanship skills.